In photography, most of the light that is received by a camera is reflected off of various objects. For example, white light from the sun may be reflected off of different objects in the field of view. An object appears to have a specific color because the object reflects light of the specific color, and absorbs light of other colors. For example, a blue object reflects blue light and absorbs light of frequencies other than blue. Often, a small amount of the latter is reflected off of the object without being absorbed, retaining the colors of the original light, such as the white light from the sun. When this extraneous light has a sufficiently high intensity, it is seen as “glare,” and has the effect of washing out the color saturation of the object.
Often, the reflected glare is polarized light, while the desirable reflected light is not polarized. This is due to the nature of the material and the reflection angle. Light is made up of light waves that are generally perpendicular to the light's direction of travel. In non-polarized light, the light waves are in many different planes, each plane being perpendicular to the direction of travel. In polarized light, the light waves are limited to one plane. Thus, while the desirable light received by a camera is non-polarized and in many planes, the undesirable glare is mostly polarized and in a single plane.
Some photographic systems enable use of a polarizer filter on a camera lens that allows a photographer to manually filter out much of the undesirable polarized light by rotating the polarizer filter until it is positioned so that it blocks the polarized light, thereby removing much of the glare, such as unwanted reflections from water, glass, vegetation, foliage, roads, and other non-metallic surfaces. Unwanted polarized light reflected by the atmosphere may also be filtered, allowing improved saturation of a blue sky. Manual positioning of a polarizer filter may take extra time or add complexity to the photographic process. A photographer's judgment as to the best position may have an unacceptable level of inaccuracy. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.